As that consciousness by which we have a knowledge of the operations of our own minds, is a different power from that by which we perceive external objects, and as these different powers have different names in our language, and, I believe, in all languages, a Philosopher ought carefully to preserve this distinction, and never to confound things so different in their nature.

8. Conceiving, imagining, and apprehending, are commonly used as synonymous in our language, and signify the same thing which the Logicians call simple apprehension. This is an operation of the mind different from all those we have mentioned. Whatever we perceive, whatever we remember, whatever we are conscious of, we have a full persuasion or conviction of its existence. But we may conceive or imagine what has no existence, and what we firmly believe to have no existence. What never had an existence cannot be remembered; what has no existence at present cannot be the object of perception or of consciousness; but what never had, nor has, any existence may be conceived. Every man knows that it is as easy to conceive a winged horse or a centaur, as it is to conceive a horse or a man. Let it be observed, therefore, that to conceive, to imagine, to apprehend, when taken in the proper sense, signify an act of the mind which implies no belief or judgment at all. It is an act of the mind by which nothing is affirmed or denied, and which therefore can neither be true nor false.

we say,

But there is another and a very different meaning of those words, so common and so well authorised in language, that it cannot easily be avoided; and on that account we ought to be the more on our guard, that we be not misled by the ambiguity. Politeness and good-breeding lead men on most occasions to express their opinions with modesty, especially when they differ from others whom they ought to respect. Therefore, when we would express our opinion modestly, instead of saying, " This is my opinion," or, "this is my judgment," which has the air of dogmaticalness, we say, I conceive it to be thus, I imagine or apprehend it to be thus;" which is understood as a modest declaration of our judgment. In like manner, when any thing is said which we take to be impossible, "We cannot conceive it," meaning, that we cannot believe it. Thus we see, that the words conceive, imagine, apprehend, have two meanings, and are used to express two operations of the mind, which ought never to be confounded. Sometimes they express simple apprehension, which implies no judgment at all; sometimes they express judgment or opinion. This ambiguity ought to be attended to, that we may not impose upon ourselves or others in the use of them. The ambiguity is indeed remedied in a great measure by their construction. When they are used to express simple apprehension, they are followed by a noun in the accusative case, which signifies the object conceived. But when they are used to express opinion or judgment, they are commonly followed by a verb in the infinitive mood. "I conceive an Egyptian pyramid." This implies no judgment. "I conceive the Egyptian pyramids to be the most ancient monuments of human art." This implies judgment. When the words are used in the last sense, the thing conceived must be a proposition, because judgment cannot be expressed but by a proposition. When they are used in the first sense, the thing conceived may be no proposition, but a simple term only, as a pyramid, an obelisk. Yet it may be observed, that even a proposition may be simply apprehended without forming any judgment of its truth or falsehood: for it is one thing to conceive the meaning of a proposition; it is another thing to judge it to be true or false.

Although the distinction between simple apprehension, and every degree of assent or judgment, be perfectly evident to every man who reflects attentively on what passes in his own mind; although it is very necessary, in treating of the powers of the mind, to attend carefully to this distinction, yet, in the affairs of common life, it is seldom necessary to observe it accurately. On this account we shall find, in all common languages, the words which express one of those operations frequently applied to the other. To think, to suppose, to imagine, to conceive, to apprehend, are the words we use to express simple apprehension; but they are all frequently used to express judgment. Their ambiguity seldom occasions any inconvenience in the common affairs of life, for which language is framed. But it has perplexed Philosophers, in treating of the operations of the mind, and will always perplex them, if they do not attend accurately to the different meanings which are put upon those words on different occasions.

9. Most of the operations of the mind, from their very nature, must have objects to which they are directed, and about which they are employed. He that perceives, must perceive something; and that which he perceives is called the object of his perception. To perceive, without having any object of perception, is impossible. The mind that perceives, the object perceived, and the operation of perceiving that object, are distinct things, and are distinguished in the structure of all languages. In this sentence, "I see, or perceive the moon" I is the person or mind; the active verb see denotes the operation of that mind; and the moon denotes the object. What we have said of perceiving, is equally applicable to most operations of the mind. Such operations are, in all languages, expressed by active transitive verbs: and we know, that, in all languages, such verbs require a thing or person, which is the agent, and a noun following in an oblique case, which is the object. Whence it is evident, that all mankind, both those who have contrived language, and those who use it with understanding, have distinguished these three things as different, to wit, the operations of the mind, which are expressed by active verbs, the mind itself, which is the nominative to those verbs, and the object, which is, in the oblique case, governed by them.

It would have been unnecessary to explain so obvious a distinction, if some systems of philosophy had not confounded it. Mr. Hume's system, in particular, confounds all distinction between the operations of the mind and their objects. When he speaks of the ideas of memory, the ideas of imagination, and the ideas of sense, it is often impossible, from the tenor of his discourse, to know whether, by those ideas, he means the operations of the mind, or the objects about which they are employed. And indeed, according to his system, there is no distinction between the one and the other.

A Philosopher is, no doubt, entitled to examine even those distinctions that are to be found in the structure of all languages; and, if he is able to show that there is no foundation for them in the nature of the things distinguished; if he can point out some prejudice common to mankind which has led them to distinguish things that are not really different; in that case, such a distinction may be imputed to a vulgar error, which ought to be corrected in philosophy. But when, in the first setting out, he takes it for granted, without proof, that distinctions found in the structure of all languages have no foundation in nature; this surely is too fastidious a way of treating the common sense of mankind. When we come to be instructed by Philosophers, we must bring the old light of

common sense along with us, and by it judge of the new light which the Philosopher communicates to us. But when we are required to put out the old light altogether, that we may follow the new, we have reason to be on our guard. There may be distinctions that have a real foundation, and which may be necessary in philosophy, which are not made in common language, because not necessary in the common business of life. But I believe no instance will be found of a distinction made in all languages, which has not a just foundation in nature.

10. The word idea occurs so frequently in modern philosophical writings upon the mind, and is so ambiguous in its meaning, that it is necessary to make some observations upon it. There are chiefly two meanings of this word in modern authors, a popular and a philosophical.

First, In popular language, idea signifies the same thing as conception, apprehension, notion. To have an idea of any thing, is to conceive it. To have a distinct idea, is to conceive it distinctly. To have no idea of it, is not to conceive it at all. It was before observed, that conceiving or apprehending, has always been considered by all men as an act or operation of the mind, and on that account has been expressed in all languages by an active verb. When, therefore, we use the phrase of having ideas, in the popular sense, we ought to attend to this, that it signifies precisely the same thing which we commonly express by the active verbs conceiving or apprehending.

When the word idea is taken in this popular sense, no man can possibly doubt whether he has ideas. For he that doubts must think, and to think is to have ideas.

Sometimes, in popular language, a man's ideas signify his opinions. The ideas of Aristotle, or of Epicurus, signify the opinions of these Philosophers. What was formerly said of the words imagine, conceive, apprehend, that they are sometimes used to express judgment, is no less true of the word idea. This signification of the word seems indeed more common in the French language than in English. But it is found in this sense in good English authors, and even in Mr. Locke. Thus we see, that having ideas, taken in the popular seuse, has precisely the same meaning with conceiving, imagining, apprehending, and has likewise the same ambiguity. It may, therefore, be doubted, whether the introduction of this word into popular discourse, to signify the operation of conceiving or apprehending, was at all necessary. For, first, We have, as has been shewn, several words which are either originally English, or have been long naturalised, that express the same thing; why therefore should we adopt a Greek word in place of these, any more than a French or a German word? Besides, the words of our own language are less ambiguous. For the word idea has, for many ages, been used by Philosophers as a term of art; and in the different systems of Philosophers means very different things.

Secondly, According to the philosophical meaning of the word idea, it does not signify that act of the mind which we call thought or conception, but some object of thought. Ideas, according to Mr. Locke (whose very frequent use of this word has probably been the occasion of its being adopted into common language)," are nothing but the immediate objects of the mind in thinking." But of those objects of thought, called Ideas, different sects of Philosophers have given a very different account. Bruckerus, a learned German, wrote a whole book giving the history of ideas.

The most ancient system we have concerning ideas, is that which is explained in several dialogues of Plato, and which many ancient, as well as modern writers, have ascribed to Plato as the inventor. But it is cer

tain that Plato had his doctrine upon this subject, as well as the name idea, from the school of Pythagoras. We have still extant a tract of Timæus the Locrian, a Pythagorean Philosopher, concerning the soul of the world, in which we find the substance of Plato's doctrine concerning ideas. They were held to be eternal, uncreated, and immutable forms or models, according to which the Deity made every species of things that exists of an eternal matter. Those philosophers held, that there are three first principles of all things. First, An eternal matter, of which all things were made: Secondly, Eternal and immaterial forms or ideas, according to which they were made: And, Thirdly, An efficient cause, the Deity, who made them. The mind of man, in order to its being fitted for the contemplation of these eternal ideas, must undergo a certain purification, and be weaned from sensible things. The eternal ideas are the only object of science; because the objects of sense being in a perpetual flux, there can be no real knowledge with regard to them.

The philosophers of the Alexandrian school, commonly called the latter Platonists, made some change upon the system of the ancient Platonists with respect to the eternal ideas. They held them not to be a principle distinct from the Deity, but to be the conceptions of things in the divine understanding, the natures and essences of all things being perfectly known to him from eternity.

It ought to be observed, that the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, whether elder or latter, made to the eternal ideas to be objects of science only, and of abstract contemplation, not the objects of sense. And in this the ancient system of eternal ideas differs from the modern one of Father Malebranche. He held, in common with other modern philosophers, that no external thing is perceived by us immediately, but only by ideas: but he thought, that the ideas, by which we perceive an external world, are the ideas of the Deity himself, in whose mind the ideas of all things past, present, and future must have been from eternity; for the Deity, being intimately present to our minds at all times, may discover to us as much of his ideas as he sees proper, according to certain established laws of nature: and in his ideas, as in a mirror, we perceive whatever we do perceive of the external world.

Thus we have three systems, which maintain, that the ideas, which are the immediate objects of human knowledge, are eternal and immutable, and existed before the things which they represent. There are other systems, according to which, the ideas, which are the immediate objects of all our thoughts, are posterior to the things which they represent, and derived from them. We shall give some account of these; but as they have gradually sprung out of the ancient Peripatetic system, it is necessary to begin with some account of it.

Aristotle taught, that all the objects of our thought enter at first by the senses; and, since the sense cannot receive external material objects themselves, it receives their species; that is, their images or forms, without the matter; as wax receives the form of the seal, without any of the matter of it. These images or forms, impressed upon the senses, are called sensible species, and are the objects only of the sensitive part of the mind: but, by various internal powers, they are retained, refined, and spiritualised, so as to become objects of memory and imagination, and, at last, of pure intellection. When they are objects of memory and imagination, they get the name of phantasms. When, by farther refinement, and being stripped of their particularities, they become objects of science, they are called intelligible species: so that every immediate object, whether of sense, of

memory, of imagination, or of reasoning, must be some phantasm or species in the mind itself.

The followers of Aristotle, especially the schoolmen, made great additions to this theory, which the Author himself mentions very briefly, and with an appearance of reserve. They entered into large disquisitions with regard to the sensible species, what kind of things they are; how they are sent forth by the object, and enter by the organs of the senses; how they are preserved and refined by various agents, called internal senses; concerning the number and offices of which they had many controversies. But we shall not enter into a detail of these matters.

The reason of giving this brief account of the theory of the Peripatetics, with regard to the immediate objects of our thoughts, is because the doctrine of modern philosophers concerning ideas is built upon it. Mr. Locke, who uses this word so very frequently, tells us, that he means the same thing by it as is commonly meant by species or phantasm. Gassendi, from whom Locke borrowed more than from any other author, says the same. The words species and phantasm, are terms of art in the Peripatetic system, and the meaning of them is to be learned from it.

The theory of Democritus and Epicurus on this subject was not very unlike to that of the Peripatetics. They held, that all bodies continually send forth slender films or spectres from their surface, of such extreme subtilty, that they easily penetrate our gross bodies, or enter by the organs of sense, and stamp their image upon the mind. The sensible species of Aristotle were mere forms without matter. The spectres of Epicurus were composed of a very subtile matter.

Modern philosophers, as well as the Peripatetics and Epicureans of old, have conceived, that external objects cannot be the immediate objects of our thought; that there must be some image of them in the mind itself, in which, as in a mirror, they are seen. And the name idea, in the philosophical sense of it, is given to those internal and immediate objects of our thoughts. The external thing is the remote or mediate object; but the idea, or image of that object in the mind, is the immediate object, without which we could have no perception, no remembrance, no conception of the mediate object.

When, therefore, in common language, we speak of having an idea of any thing, we mean no more by that expression, but thinking of it. The vulgar allow, that this expression implies a mind that thinks; an act of that mind which we call thinking, and an object about which we think. But besides these three, the philosopher conceives that there is a fourth, to wit, the idea, which is the immediate object. The idea is in the mind itself, and can have no existence but in a mind that thinks; but the remote or mediate object may be something external, as the sun or moon; it may be something past or future; it may be something which never existed. This is the philosophical meaning of the word idea; and we may observe, that this meaning of that word is built upon a philosophical opinion: for, if philosophers had not believed that there are such immediate objects of all our thoughts in the mind, they would never have used the word idea to express them.

I shall only add on this article, that, although I may have occasion to use the word idea in this philosophical sense in explaining the opinions of others, I shall have no occasion to use it in expressing my own, because I believe ideas, taken in this sense, to be a mere fiction of Philosophers. And, in the popular meaning of the word, there is the less occasion to e it, because the English words, thought, notion, apprehension, answer